New York Strippers Drugged Men, Stole Their Money, Prosecutors Say

Four strippers and a club manager have been charged with picking up professional men at bars, drugging them and then stealing their money, law-enforcement authorities said Wednesday.

Samantha Barbash, Roselyn Keo, Karina Pascucci, Marsi Rosen and Carmine Vitolo were each charged with conspiracy and other financial crimes, said Bridget Brennan, New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor.

Karina Pascucci and Carmine Vitolo were arraigned Wednesday afternoon before Judge Bonnie Wittner in Manhattan Supreme Court. Both pleaded not guilty. Mr. Vitolo was released pending further court proceedings. Ms. Ms. Pascucci was released on $5,000 cash bail.

On Tuesday, Ms. Barbash was held on $10,000 cash bail. Ms. Keo and Ms. Rosen were held on $5,000 each. All three pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The five are accused of stealing about $200,000 from four victims’s credit cards between September and December 2013, prosecutors said. The men work in medicine, finance and law.

The women met the men at city restaurants for dates or introduced themselves at bars, prosecutors said. They are charged with then slipping them men a tranquilizer, cocaine, or another drug, prosecutors said.

Carmine Vitolo on Wednesday.

Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal

While the men were drugged, the women are charged with taking them to Scores New York, on West 28th Street in Manhattan, or RoadHouse NYC Gentlemen’s Club in College Point, Queens.

The women took the men to private rooms, officials said. While inside, the women would take the men’s identification and credit cards, officials said.

They charged tens of thousands of dollars to the cards by forging the victim’s signature or concealing the true amount of the charge from the victim, officials said. The charges ranged from $5,000 to more than $100,000, officials said.

Assistant District Attorney Eryck Kratville said Mr. Vitolo was a manager at Roadhouse, and was directly involved in deciding how much money should be taken from the victims. His attorney, Brian Pakett, said in court that his client was “completely and utterly shocked at the allegation,” adding, “this is a 43-year-old man with no convictions on his record whatsoever.”

Ms. Pascucci’s lawyer, Patrick Parrotta, noted that the 26-year-old was gainfully employed and that it was her first arrest.

“This repugnant scheme involved not only the theft of $200,000, but compromised the health, safety and security of victims by covertly giving them harmful substances,” Ms. Brennan said. “The defendants were banking on the victims being too afraid to contact the police, but as the indictment and arrests show, they made a serious miscalculation.”

The arrests were the result of an eight-month investigation by the New York Police Department, Ms. Brennan’s office, and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.